San Diego only ‘gayest’ city in state

By Christy Scannell

SDUN Editor

The Advocate, a national gay and lesbian magazine, named San Diego the 14th “gayest city” in America in its February issue. San Diego was the only California city included in the list of 15, defeating Albuquerque but falling behind Atlanta (#1); Burlington, Vt. (#2) and even Iowa City (#3) and Portland, Maine (#8).

“San Diego has always been more bi-friendly, mellower, less snooty and a place to which L.A. gays frequently escape,” the magazine said.

Chris Shaw, owner of Hillcrest restaurants Urban Mo’s, Baja Betty’s and Gossip Grill, said he isn’t surprised San Diego was recognized as gay friendly.

“This is just a comfortable city – everyone feels welcome here,” he said. “San Diego is a fun town to be in, anything goes, and it’s not about just standing and posing. It’s a great environment.”

But Tom Luhnow, chief executive officer of the Greater San Diego Business Association, argued that San Diego deserved greater recognition.

“We think we should have ranked higher,” he said, “since we have the second largest gay and lesbian chamber of commerce in the country, two openly gay men serving on the City Council, a lesbian district attorney, a lesbian state senator, and our previous fire chief was lesbian, not to mention our wonderful mayor, Jerry Sanders, just testified in support of gay marriage in the Prop. 8 trial.”

The magazine said cities were ranked using an “admittedly subjective” point system that analyzed same-sex couple households per capita, status of statewide marriage equality, number of gay elected officials, number of gay bars and “cruising spots” per capita and the number of gay films in Netflix subscriber favorites among other criteria.